


First Contact

by Palefire73



Series: Prisoners. The Chronicles of Loki and Erika [13]
Category: Loki - Fandom, Marvel
Genre: Alternate Reality, Covert Communication, F/M, Love, Prison, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 10:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palefire73/pseuds/Palefire73
Summary: Erika is on her own one day and the wanderings of her mind bring her round to wondering about the rudimentary communication The Vision taught her about. She goes to see if it is really there...





	First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> Quick credit to the Star Trek franchise, as they used this title before me. However, there are no Klingons or Vulcans in this story - sorry!

It was a fairly bright day for the time of year and Loki had decided he wanted to do one of his checks around the property of the small holding in order to keep on top of any repairs that might become necessary. Word had been sent to him from the town that there was someone interested in the positon of farm hand and that he would be coming to meet them the following day, so it made sense to compile a list of tasks to be carried out so that a schedule of works could be drawn up. It would also mean that the applicant could be asked about any skills he may have which would be particularly useful for the general upkeep of the farm. Loki had gratefully accepted the packed lunch Erika had made up for him and, having taken her into a firm embrace and kissed her farewell, had mounted his new favourite horse and ridden off for the West perimeter.

 

Left to her own devices, Erika had taken a leisurely breakfast before getting dressed and going out into the garden. Many of the flowers, fruits and vegetables were way past their best and had died back already, so she tidied up around them and put the half decomposed matter into a large wooden bin made from old floor boards and fence panels. She placed a small wicker basket on the lawn, which had stopped growing months ago, and turned her attention to the last of the dried seed heads and pods which were just about clinging on to the brittle brown stalks of their parent plants. In her basket were several paper packets, each with the name of a particular plant, its flower, its seed and various other attributes it may have written on them in pencil. Since she had been here, Loki had taken it upon himself to teach her a little about the various plants in the garden and she had found that it was something she found very interesting. Loki was very obviously knowledgeable about many aspects of herb lore and he was a very patient and enthusiastic teacher, clearly enjoying passing on what he knew to someone else. Part of the care for this section of the garden involved collecting the seeds so that they could be germinated the following year in a huge greenhouse tucked in a corner of the property situated up a small hill where it got plenty of sunshine. She had only seen it once and it was not currently in use, having been tidied up for the winter, but there were stacks of small germinating pots, trowels, forks, spades, hoes, rakes, secateurs and all manner of other gardening paraphernalia in there. The long potting benches had been scrubbed and folded down against the inside of the walls and now there were only a few feet of the beds at the end turned over to winter salad crops.

 

The first brown wizened pods she picked were from a lofty plant which tended to climb up some wooden trellis which had been fixed to the garden wall. The flowers of this one became more prolific the more they were cut and since they had a most delightful scent, they were used a lot for flowers in the house. Erika was quite surprised by the number of pods that had matured and dried – perhaps they could sell seedlings in the town next spring. It was not long before her task was complete and she picked up her basket to take everything to the green house. Loki had clad the inside with some rush matting to stop the worst of the weather affecting the plants sheltering in there, whether in their over-wintering complete form, as corms, tubers or seedlings, or actively growing such as the salads. She placed everything neatly away and closed and latched the door of the green house behind her as she left, and looked out over the fields as she made her way down the small hill back to the house. It was a truly beautiful landscape and she wished there was a way in which she could thank The Vision for creating such a place for them. He had given them somewhere wonderful to live and in doing so had given them the opportunity of having a decent life together – probably having calculated that it would give them the best chance at all of this being successful, statistically.

 

Thinking about communication reminded her of the short lessons she had been given in the time right before entering the prison: The Vision had taught her a little of binary coding and had told her where there was a camera feeding pictures back to a secure place on Midgard where he could pick them up. Would she be able to tell him she was happy? The coding was supposed to be used to prevent Loki accidentally finding a message and becoming aware that things were not as they might seem, but surely it would not harm to put a very short picture message instead? Not quite as detailed as writing, but a bit better than a series of lines which would only allow one or two words at a time. Then she dismissed it: Loki would find something like that very unusual and be able to crack it within seconds. A quick glance at the position of the Winter sun told her that Loki would more than likely be another two or three hours before he was back and she decided that she would go to the place The Vision had told her of and at least have a look to see what was there, then she would be prepared if the need came for her to use it. Perhaps it would never get used; hopefully there would never be a need, and if he could not communicate back with her, then there did not really seem to be much point.

 

Erika’s curiosity quickly got the better of her doubts and she decided to go anyway. A quick check when she got back to the house revealed that Loki was indeed still out doing his checks and so she left through the front garden gate and started up the lane which led to the main road for Asgard. It was the lane she had first approached her new home on and it felt strange to be walking back up it after a few weeks of making her new life here. She passed the faint trail which led to the abandoned shack through which she had come to this alternate reality and noticed that it was already very overgrown and had almost disappeared from sight: would she eventually forget of its existence? Carrying on up the track, which grew steeper as she got further away from home, she eventually came across a standing stone at the side which served as a border marker for their property. However, it was also the marker for where she needed to turn off to go to the place where The Vision had secreted the way in which she could communicate with him if she felt she really needed to. Glancing around, she saw no one and she quickly left the track and passed through a thick growth of Asgardian Rhododendrons which formed a screen between the track and the wooded area behind. Trying to remember what her instructions were for finding what she was looking for, Erika studied the plants growing there and quickly spotted what she had been told would guide her. It would probably not be obvious to anyone else who chanced to come here, but there was a line of Asgardian Redbark leading off in one direction and there were only a couple of them growing singly nearby. She walked along the line of trees, whose outer dark brown bark was peeling away to reveal the newer, redder bark underneath, and eventually came to a giant Asgardian Yew.

 

The woods led off in all directions from here, but it was the yew tree that she wanted. It was a very old and mature tree which had reached the point where it was more of a community of trees than a single specimen; the original Mother Tree stood in the middle and all her offspring grew from where her impressive boughs had met the earth and had put down roots of their own. The girth of this behemoth of an organism was over twenty feet and once again, Erika had to study it to find where she had been told to go. She circled it twice before becoming concerned as to whether this was the right place, but surely there were no more examples of trees like this here? Then she found it: an old scar which had left a large hole in the trunk of the original tree was just barely visible through the outlying growth and through it two new trees were growing. She picked her way through the branches of the outer smaller trunks and stood before the hole, which was about three feet across and craned her neck to look past the two saplings which were just about poking their tops through. Inside, moss had grown up the inside of the huge trunk, which was still living and supporting the rest of the structure of the tree, and there was evidence of birds having nested there this year, including a small hole bored into a thick ridge of the trunk.

 

That was it!

  
Erika poked her finger in through the hole and amazingly, what The Vision had described to her was there. She pressed a small protrusion and the moss coating split along in a crack about six inches long, then a square of the bark swung outwards to reveal a niche in the wood. Erika bent down slightly to look inside and saw the very tiniest of black metal boxes with a minute circle of glass in the centre: the camera. It was facing outwards and would normally be looking at the “door” of the niche, which had swung open. On the bottom of the niche, just under the camera, was a stick of charcoal and a quick examination showed her that the inside of the door was very pale in colour. She perched on the bottom curve of the hole in the outer trunk and thought back to her lessons in binary; the code was simple, but even the shortest of messages could take up a lot of room. She remembered that there were different thicknesses of lines, both black charcoal and pale background, to indicate numbers which would be applied to the common Yggdrasillian alphabet and allow the Vision to interpret her words and all that was really necessary was for her to decide upon a word which was short and would convey her message. Obviously the emergency word was “help”: very short and easy to code and only to be used in an absolute emergency. The Vision had not told her what would happen if she ever had cause to communicate this message, but he had intimated that it would lead to the removal of both Loki and herself from the prison.

 

Deciding upon what she wanted to write, Erika concentrated for the next five or ten minutes, doing her best to ensure that she got the lines in the right order and thickness for what she wanted to say and then she closed the little compartment, making it virtually invisible to anyone not expecting something like that to be there. As the door clicked shut, she heard a small whirring and a faint flash of light came out of the hole before it fell silent again; it must have been the camera taking a picture of her message to send to The Vision! Feeling strangely cheerful at having actually communicated with someone out in the real Nine for the first time in weeks, Erika carefully climbed back out from the centre of the giant yew and made her way back to the track which led down to the small holding. She went into the house and cleaned herself up before putting a large fresh Asgardian Cauliflower on to steam and preparing a sauce of tangy cheese to go with it. Just as Loki arrived back from his day of checking for jobs to be done around the property, she was blanching some winter greens and served the whole thing up to the table bang on time for him coming downstairs having had a quick wash. They shared the supper and chatted with each other about what they had done during the day, with the obvious exception of the visit to send a message on Erika’s part. They spent the rest of the evening playing the Midgardian game of chess, which Erika was getting better and better at, then held hands as they took a short moonlit walk around some of the garden before retiring to bed for a restful sleep. The following day would see the arrival of their potential new farm hand and they both wanted to be up fresh and early to be prepared.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A small blue dot of light was blinking on the server module when The Vision got back from his meeting and he immediately locked the door of his office and scanned the room for suspicious devices. It was a habit he had, and a good one at that; he could not risk any spying being done, especially now that he had become a more prominent member of the security forces on Midgard. Satisfied that there was nothing untoward, he switched on the small monitor tucked away in the corner and activated the messaging system that was linked to the blue alert. Why had Erika used the secret means of communication so soon? Surely things could not have gone wrong already! He clicked on the report log which had been created a few hours ago within the alternate reality prison and at the same time he activated the server which controlled the cameras he had installed at various points around the farm to keep an eye on things.

 

The Vision was a complicated being, created from a synthetically generated body fused with the Mind Gem and imbued with the AI which had been known as Jarvis, and “he” was constantly intrigued by the new emotional experiences he went through on a daily, if not minute-by-minute basis. And so it was a new level of satisfaction and happiness he achieved when he saw the snapshot which had been taken of Erika’s rudimentary message and on another screen glimpsed the couple walking through one of the archways of their garden, only pausing to share a sweet kiss on the moonlit bathed footpath before turning back to go to the house. Far from being an emergency contact Erika’s attempt at communication, although flawed in its execution – some of the lines were not quite right but he got the idea – was a very nice surprise and one that caused in him another human emotion: hope. Scrawled in wobbly lines of charcoal on the paler background in binary coding that was unique in its errors, Erika had just about managed to write “Thank you Jarvis x”.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! I managed to complete my third half marathon yesterday and I finally got my time under two and a half hours! To celebrate, here is another story and this time it is about my favourite Asgardian :)


End file.
